Publishing

My brand new world-building book is out now! Pop over to Amazon to check it out. The Kindle version is available to pre-order and will be released on 1 October.

It’s my guide to creating a believable world for your stories, no matter what medium you use to tell them or how fantastical (or even mundane) your setting. There are worksheets, writing exercises and illustrations to help you out. There is also a checklist of things you might not have considered (but probably ought to know).

Hopefully, this book will help some of you out, especially considering that it is time to start planning for NaNoWriMo. November will be here before you know it!

As well as the impending launch of my book, I have some exciting news about my site. I am moving to jooram.com! It’s not a huge change, but I’m very excited about it anyway.

The book is also coming along well and I expect it to be available for sale before October. The print version is looking good and now I’m putting the final touches on the Kindle version. I hope you’re as excited as I am!

Cover art? Check. Blurb? Check. Words for the inside of the book? Check! It’s all coming together nicely – and here’s a sneak preview of the cover, just for you. The release is currently scheduled for October with the pre-orders coming in September. If you liked my worksheets, please check it out – it’s got even more resources to help you with your work.

It’s been a busy year for me so far with a lot of deadlines, but I’m really looking forward to this one. Stay tuned for more news soon!

I posted a while back about the Worldbuilding book I planned to release. It still hasn’t happened yet as things came up that made me delay (and I was so close!), but I’m hoping to have it out before November. The current release date is October 15 and I’m hoping to get the pre-orders up at the beginning of October. Why November? NaNoWriMo, of course! I’m writing this book with you guys in mind and I’m hoping it will give you a bit of inspiration for your advance planning.

Of course, the book isn’t aimed solely at novel writers. It’s for any writer who needs a world built from scratch. Fiction in all its guises – prose, script, screenplay, games – and in whatever genre you write. While people might think “worldbuilding” applies only to the sci-fi and fantasy worlds we create, the same principals can be relevant to other genres too. Have you ever read historical fiction where the author has got a fact spectacularly wrong (for example, mentioning their Tudor-era peasants raiding the fridge)? That’s bad worldbuilding (and poor research). It’s not just about the fantastical and the futuristic. It’s about making all the elements of your story stick together. Worldbuilding is the glue that binds. It’s the waterproofing that rejects the unbelievable. It’s the tiny details that give your story a soul.

So this year has been a bit of a downer so far, but finally, I have writing-related good news! Issue 2 of Story Emporium (Purveyors of Steampunk & Weird Western Adventure) is coming out in August and my short story The Herald may be featured. You can check out the cover art for the magazine here.

In other news, I promise I haven’t given up on The Rage. I’m just taking a little break and rebooting my writing brain so that the next part is as good as it possibly can be. I’ll admit, I lost my way with it a little and wrote several versions of the next episode, but none of them were quite good enough. Plus, with all this summer, you’ve got to get outside while the sun is shining!

Also this year, I will be publishing my world-building book and I’m looking for people to join in with my cover reveal. Post a comment below to let me know if you’re interested.